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Having the kind of customized Cadillac Eldorado that would appeal to both Liberaceandthe Duke of New York would be a fine thing, as we learned last week, but the bar for success on such a project is set a little too low to sit well with the pitchfork-wielding imps who keep the temperature in the Hell Garage above the melting point of sulfur. All you'd need to do with your flamboyantly customized Eldo would be to fix the paint and interior, maybe swap in a 500-cube engine, and head over to Pimpdaddy.com for your outfits.

What the Hell Garage demons want for you, my friend, is the glory of racing! And we don't mean some sort of boring racing. Oh no, we're talking about vintage racing, with hordes of buzzing, spindly, half-century-old machines setting their drum brakes on fire and bashing expensively into tire walls. Glory! What you're not going to do is the sensible thing, which is to buy some broke racer-dude's ready-to-go MGB or Datsun Sports for 40 percent of the money he has invested in the thing, because your garage needs a racy roadster project in need of absolutely everything a bit of TLC. A diamond in the rough! Thanks to eBay's "Other Makes" section, we've had no problem finding just the right pair of candidates for you.

The Almquist Sabre II: Whatever you want it to be as long as it's got an 82-92 inch wheelbase.

Never heard of Almquist Engineering? Back in the mid-1950s, Almquist made a line of metal-reinforced fiberglass bodies that budget-minded racers could assemble based on whatever short-wheelbase automobile chassis they happened to have lying around--and by "assemble" we mean "re-engineer the whole structure more or less from scratch." The Jalopy Journal has a nice post on Almquist that includes some period ads that show the types of chassis the skilled backyard fabricator might use for his Almquist Engineering body. The Sabre II body was suitable for any 82- to 92-inch wheelbase, including Volkswagen, Hillman, Morris, Simca, and Crosley, and it looked pretty wild. Ditch the weak-O 569-cc Simca 6 engine, or the technically fascinating but equally weak-O Crosley COBRA that came with the chassis and replace it with, say, a Ford V8-60 or some other cheap engine with vast aftermarket hop-up parts availability and you'd have a low-budget racer that would eat up those shiny MGAs and 356s. Yes, a genuine Almquist Sabre II with period-correct running gear sure would trigger envious murmurings in the paddock of any vintage-racing event nowadays, and--thanks again to eBay's "Other Makes" bonanza--it's possible for you to make the down payment on your next bankruptcy get into the sport at a totally reasonably price.

We've found this 1955 Almquist Sabre II project in Kentucky with no reserve price and a top bid (at the time of this writing) of just $1,300.51. It's based on a Crosley chassis, it's very rough, and it's missing quite a few bits and pieces. The seller doesn't try to sugarcoat anything, because he or she knows that the value of this fine racing machine shines through all the decades of dirt and rust. What you'll need to do, then, is inherit a hundred grand start gathering pre-1955 parts, beginning with the engine and transmission. A Crosley COBRA (or even the later cast-iron version) would be cool, but the Alfa Romeo Twin Cam engine made its debut in 1954, and there's always the excellent--if somewhat heavy--331-cubic-inch Cadillac OHV. The engine choice will dictate the transmission selection, of course--just hear those cash-register sound effects, eh?--and you can feel confident that whatever rear axle sits in the car right now is completely hosed, so you'll need to do something about that as well. Brakes, suspension, interior, wiring, fuel tank, you name it--the shopping list goes on and on and on. But imagine how it will feel, in 2024 or so, when you finally roar onto the racetrack and get T-boned by a Hudson Wasp start passing the lesser cars to the roar of an appreciative crowd!

There's only one real flaw in the Almquist Sabre II plan, and that's the fact that the car isn't Italian enough. If you're going to be sawing at the wheel on a track full of Elvas and Alpines, you want that wheel to be attached to a machine made in the country that understands racing best of all. A Fiat or Alfa would be acceptable, but a true Hell Garage occupant needs to have origins so obscure as to make your neighbors do that twirling-finger-by-the-ear motion while asking "What's he building in there?" Yes, your relatives will begin a lot of sentences with "Let's face it" when they talk about you and your latest project, this 1960 Moretti 750 Tour de Monde, which is available in Northern California for a current bid price of $2,651.00. By 1960, the Moretti Motor Company was building the 750 on a Fiat 600 chassis, which means that you should be able to find all the suspension and drivetrain components you'll need in Italy. And you'll need plenty of those parts, because this car is so rough that the seller "almost cried" when he saw it.

There's body rust, caused by the harsh summers and rainy winters of Sacramento, and you can feel confident that every component that ever touched fluid needs replacement or complete rebuilding. As for the interior . . . well, there isn't one. No problem, just find an original Moretti 750 and have your local upholstery shop whip up a replica interior for your car. How much could that cost?

You'll want to scour southern Europe for every period-correct speed part available for that Fiat engine, because 29 hp is about a third of what you'll need on the track. When you're done, though (about the time that the Mars Colony begins accepting its first loads of tourists), you'll know that it was worth your life savings to get this Moretti onto the track, where it has always belonged.